Okay unlike this week’s snoozer in Alabama (as I feared, Roby won so easily she outran the brackets PI chose for MoV), we’ve got a couple very interesting races coming up in Georgia next Tuesday, July 24!  Let’s take a closer look.

Links

GA R-Gov primary run-off

• Ballotpedia
• Round one results (NYT) / Round one results (official)
• Election night results (links will be added as they become available):
  • NYT
  • Vox/DDHQ
  • Georgia Secretary of State

GA R-Gov primary run-off MoV

GA R-Lt. Gov primary run-off

• Ballotpedia
• Round one results (NYT) / Round one results (official)
• Election night results (links will be added as they become available):
  • NYT
  • Vox/DDHQ
  • Georgia Secretary of State

GA-06 D primary run-off

• Ballotpedia
• Round one results (NYT) / Round one results (official)
• Election night results (links will be added as they become available):
  • NYT
  • Vox/DDHQ
  • Georgia Secretary of State

GA-07 D primary run-off

• Ballotpedia
• Round one results (NYT) / Round one results (official)
• Election night results (links will be added as they become available):
  • NYT
  • Vox/DDHQ
  • Georgia Secretary of State

Cagle vs. Kemp – Is it over already for the R-Gov runoff?

Cagle won round one.  Kemp made some absurdly crazy ads.  Cagle got caught on tape complaining about how winning the race was about “who had the biggest gun, who had the biggest truck, and who could be the craziest”.  Kemp pounced.  Kemp took a small polling lead.  Trump endorses Kemp (did Trump see internal polling?).   Today, a public poll finds Kemp with a huge lead (55-37, yikes).

If this REALLY is over, let’s hope we at least get an MoV with reasonable brackets [UPDATE: we did].  If not, there will be some serious money to be made election night.  Market will bite hard on the first early votes that are reported (there are ~100k in as of Monday statewide, but those include both parties), but be aware many of those were made pre-endorsement (if you think that matters).  Other than that, pay attention to which counties are reporting first – if Kemp is leading in the rurals that Cagle won round one, it’s probably over (while Atlanta has a lot of the vote, it’s a smaller fraction of the statewide total than, say, in a Democratic primary).

Finally, pay attention to what the overall Governor market does – it’s priced expecting a Kemp win right now I believe.

How are we still gambling on GA-06?

From the state that brought you “vote your Ossoff” it’s time for yet another contest for the votes of the Atlanta suburbanites.  This time, it’s Lucy McBath (36.27% round one) trying to keep Kevin Abel (30.54% round one) at bay and claim the right to challenge Karen Handel in November.  With little polling, there’s not much to go on here besides your own take on the candidates (see Ballotpedia for an overview) and how they performed round one.

My 2c, having not done anything other than give this race a cursory look, is that it’s interesting that McBath took every county (and so many of the precincts therein).  And it’s also interesting that the newscaster that finished third is another white guy like Abel.  So who knows?  Seems like a race where, if it is tight, having a good handle on how precincts are changing from round one to runoff will give the numerically-inclined trader an edge.  Maybe no greater an edge than basic county analysis but it’s worth pointing out that we do have this data this time (via the Georgia SOS).

A sleeper upset possible in GA-07?

The market seems to love Bourdeaux (27.28% round one), but Kim (25.98%) did take one of the two counties here (barely).  Far be it from me to question the wisdom of the crowds but I’ll be watching this one to see if it actually crumbles the way they think.  Would be fun to see what an early vote dump favoring Kim does…

Does anyone care about the Lt. Gov race?

Unless it’s a big upset, I sure don’t.

Electoral returns dynamics

Georgia has early voting – and these will be the first reported, typically in a huge dump by each county.  It’s also home to Fulton and DeKalb, two Atlanta-area counties known for taking forever to count their votes.  If we have close races on election night, or good MoV opportunities, this will be a great opportunity for those who like to do the election night math (and election night markets can do some amazingly stupid things give how few traders actually put that work in).

One final note – if things go late in GA-06/07, watch for the official results site to have new results the fastest.

Disclaimer: I probably have positions or intend to take positions in just about all the markets I discuss herein.  You should always do your own research prior to making any investment decision. You should consider my advice and knowledge I share to be fundamentally biased in its presentation and selection by my own financial incentives.  While I do not knowingly lie I certainly do knowingly omit information that I think gives me an edge.

Hey folks!  I wrote in my weekly preview that we didn’t have any elections this week – but then PredictIt added two markets yesterday for the Alabama run-offs today!  Let’s take a look at AL-02 GOP run-off:

Links:

Who will win AL-02 Republican primary run-off?

What will the AL-02 Republican primary run-off MoV be?

Ballotpedia

Unofficial round one results / Official round one results (downloads an excel spreadsheet) / Map of unofficial round one results (NYT)

NYT Results / DDHQ/Vox Results / Alabama SoS results (links will be added as they become available)

NYT Race Preview

Time of First Results: ~8pm Eastern

Overview

This race pits Martha Roby (39% round 1), incumbent congresswoman who distanced herself from Trump following Access Hollywood, vs Bobby Bright, a former Democratic Congressman who once supported Nancy Pelosi (28.1% round 1).  After earning Trump’s endorsement, most expect Roby to cruise to victory here.  (The market has her around 90c, but it’s quite gappy).  I’m not seeing any polling done of this race (I may not have looked hard enough) so there’s some room for volatility here and little to go on for MoV until the votes start coming in.  (That said, the brackets in MoV have me worried there’s a risk this thing goes easily 10+ and this is a boring night).

Political Geography

Well, Bright won a single county Round 1 (Dale county) and only by ~170 votes (according to unofficial results).  The rest of the counties Roby either won or placed second in.  Most of the vote is in Montgomery County, though it’s not super-concentrated there.  Houston, Geneva, Coffee, Elmore, and Autauga (not in order) also contributed healthy totals.  My guess is this won’t be a typical urban-rural race where later-posting population dense counties shift the race away from what earlier-posting rural counties do.

Will Turnout Exceed Round 1 or Decline?

94,181 votes were cast in Round 1 (not that high).  By default I would expect turnout to be down from that, which might increase volatility.

Bottom Line

These markets will be interesting if and only if Bobby Bright can show some unexpected strength early on.  There’s a real risk Roby cruises to an easy 10+ point victory here given the Trump endorsement (look what happened in Grimm-Donovan).  Since Bright seemed to lack a concentrated electoral base in Round 1, the chances are lower that we’ll get any flips based on which counties report first and so on.  Let’s all cross our fingers and hope that even if Roby wins, she does so by just barely or less than 10 points, eh?

Disclaimer: I probably have positions or intend to take positions in just about all the markets I discuss herein.  You should always do your own research prior to making any investment decision. You should consider my advice and knowledge I share to be fundamentally biased in its presentation and selection by my own financial incentives.  While I do not knowingly lie I certainly do knowingly omit information that I think gives me an edge.

Disclaimer: I probably have positions or intend to take positions in just about all the markets I will discuss herein.  You should always do your own research prior to making any investment decision. You should consider my advice and knowledge I share to be fundamentally biased in its presentation and selection by my own financial incentives.  While I do not knowingly lie I certainly do knowingly omit information that I think gives me an edge.

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The week that was

I hope everyone enjoyed their post-SCOTUS week!  While RDT was a bit of a snooze, WHT, PT, and VPT all delivered fantastic action.  Can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a PT market where four out of seven brackets hit 40c at some point or another.  And that flip in VPT!  Sublime:

(A bracket that hit 1c on Thursday ends up taking the cake!)

Even the good ol’ RCP polling market saw a flip with a surprise Thursday Fox.

Congrats to all the winners this week – and hopefully those of you new traders who made a few bucks on SCOTUS got a chance to see what crazy things can and do happen on PredictIt on a weekly basis!

The week ahead

No major events (known!) and no elections this week, so it’s back to basics in tweets and polls, and maybe a chance to do some research on the upcoming midterms as we enter the back half of July.  Here’s what I’m watching:

Tweets

(New to tweet markets?  Have a read of my guide here: Part 1 | Part 2).

RDT – Is Scotland’s Turnberry the Mar-A-Lago of Europe?  A place to kick back, fire up the telly, and tweet til your fingers go numb?  Or does he go quiet ahead of his Putin powwow?  My guess is that the man tweets.  There’s a lot to tweet about that he hasn’t touched on and he’s been tweeting liberally on this foreign trip (and all summer, with the exception of the pre-SCOTUS drought) anyway.  Is it enough to make B80 good?  That I can’t tell you.

WHT, PT – Weird spot for both of these.  On the one hand, fairly liberal retweets recently of RDT by Mr. Scavino on PT.  On the other hand, how active is WHT going to be this weekend?  For the Putin summit?  What’ll these accounts be up to upon the return to the states?  There are some potentially juicy swings here, but it’s far too soon to know in which direction.

VPT – Well with a spot of research you ought to be able to figure out what he’s up to.  And it should be reasonably tweetsy.  Do I think it’s a clear B7 week?  Well given that he just spat out an absolutely dead Thursday I don’t think the number of events really does mean anything just yet.  (As I write this I’m listening to his current Chicagoland AFP where it seems things are getting a little feisty?  Wonder if that continues.)

Polls

(New to polling markets?  Have a read of my guide here: Part 1 | Part 2).

Quinn, CNN, CBS, NBC/WSJ are all live possibilities I would imagine this week (polling reax to Kavanaugh).  How nice would it be if we get a Monday Approval and Wednesday Ballot from CNN?  Otherwise we’re dealing with the normal bit of daily YGs, Gal, Ras, and Reut for 538 TA; Reut, YG, MC, and Ras for 538 Ballot; and basically everything for next week’s weekly RCP.

This is also the point in the month that you’re going to want to start paying close attention to the monthly RCP market, as polls we get now have a reasonable chance (though no guaranteed shot) of remaining on the list on 7/31.

Worth researching

SCOTUS Markets – There’s a lot of volume and interest here!  My sense is that the markets have it more or less right (with Manchin, Donnelly, Heitkamp, Collins etc. looking to get to YES on Kavanaugh).  Democrats are taking several different lines of attack on Kav – healthcare, abortion rights, Mueller and presidential power, etc.  The only thing that sincerely flips any of these folks is some kind of revelation on healthcare, and even then it would have to coincide with a political uproar.  We shall see.  Rand might end up being the meme-iest market because if I know Rand, he’s going to do something amazingly obstinate at some point and threaten to blow up everything before backing down for no gain.

May we get a new UK PM?  The media is hyping up the drama overseas right now (which happens to have coincided with Trump’s visit and his freely offered opinions on Boris Johnson), yet I don’t think we have any indication of a serious move being made to challenge May.  But as I wrote before, this is still not one I’ve closely watched, and I think for those of you that are interested in a mid-priced and potentially swing-y market this is one to watch.  And don’t forget about its new cousin: who will be the next Conservative party leader?

Georgia on my mind – The primary run-offs are coming up July 24th and if you’re looking to place a bet based on fundamentals and so forth, now is the time to get your money in: D-primary GA-07, D-primary GA-06, and R-Gov primary.

Hottest year ever?  This one doesn’t resolve for a while, but it’s new this week and I think the Predictor that bothers to do a little bit googling may find themselves rewarded here.

Disclaimer: I probably have positions or intend to take positions in just about all the markets I will discuss herein.  You should always do your own research prior to making any investment decision. You should consider my advice and knowledge I share to be fundamentally biased in its presentation and selection by my own financial incentives.  While I do not knowingly lie I certainly do knowingly omit information that I think gives me an edge.

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What a day yesterday was! And what. a. market.  With over $1M traded back and forth yesterday, it was a huge day for PredictIt as well, with hopefully plenty of new faces showing up and learning what the fun is all about.

In the end, it was always Kavanaugh

But it took a while before the market figured it out!  The day started with Barrett making a run into the 30s (of course), before morning reporting by the NYTimes suggested that Trump was mainly making his mind up between Hardiman and Kavanaugh.  And while Barrett would retreat to the low teens initially, it wouldn’t be til the denouement that she capitulated for good.

Meanwhile, Hardiman and Kavanaugh jockeyed for the top spot, with Kav the early favorite.  Hardiman surged, as Nate Silver noticed, following reports by the WSJ that Hardiman’s allies had been told to prepare for his roll-out.

But much like after his famous gas-station pit stop in 2017, Hardiman’s odds couldn’t stay high forever.  It was an eagle-eyed tipster’s report to Peter Baker that elevated Kavanaugh to the lead he wouldn’t relinquish the rest of the market.  Further reporting on the DC Circuit’s unusual decision to rush out a Monday decision sealed the deal.

SCOTUS drama ain’t over yet folks

Now that we got a nominee, we’ve got other markets to consider.

How many votes will Kavanaugh get? (From senators – Pence doesn’t count so technically 49 or fewer can still resolve even if Pence breaks a tie).

How will Manchin, Jones, Tester, Collins, Murkowksi, Donnelly, Heitkamp, and Paul vote?

And can McTurtle get it all done by the end of September?

I plan to do a deeper look at this and share my thoughts later, but for now I hope you all have a gander at these markets and throw a few offers out.

The weeklies

SCOTUS Tweets?  NATO Tweets?

I wrote last week that I was afraid RDT would end up a boring B1 week, but that he was getting just enough energy to make it interesting in the end.  And after a solid post-inhibitory retweet-fest this morning (I’m writing around 10 am), he’s well within striking range of making B2.  Or maybe he’ll go silent…  A classic drift spot.

PT is looking dangerous enough to escape B1 as well (though that might change if NATO energy is low).  WHT has no clue what to do with itself (as I wrote earlier, easily the swingiest potential market).  And VPT is sort of cautiously bullish.  Look for that market to break one way or the other today.

Polling world

I anticipate a relatively normal week polling-wise from this point forward.  We got WaPo/Schar, we got Emerson, feels like we probably can’t ask for too many more one-offs.  But next week should bring a lot of polls on Kavanaugh reactions (and there’s a chance some enterprising pollster tries to squeeze a quick one out for this week).

So as usual, pay attention to what the Reuters fairies bring us today, what Morning Consult does in the morning tomorrow, what YouGov does, etc.  There may yet still be some good action in the 538 ballot market, especially given that the overall spread is pretty high at the moment.

Midterm polling

Some interesting data here from a month-long Axios/SM poll.  Not sure I trust that TNSen number but who knows?

Gravis is also out with AZ and TX.  And they did NJ as well but I haven’t looked around to see if that’s out yet.

Turmoil across the pond

As I wrote a couple days ago, something is going on with Theresa May.  The market had her at 70c to survive through til the end of the year then.  Now it’s 50/50.  So hopefully you faithful readers gave it a look!  The latest movement is on the resignation of her Brexit secretary and her foreign secretary.  This kind of upheaval may eventually lead to a conservative challenge to her leadership, or maybe an election, or maybe who knows.  I don’t pretend to have insight here, but it’s definitely worth looking into.

Will Strzok show?

If he does, as is expected, this market goes to 99c Thursday.  If he doesn’t, it probably goes to 50c if not lower.  So there’s guaranteed money there one way or the other this week…

Who hasn’t stayed up late the night before a major paper is due?  Cramming last minute for an exam?  Debating who to nominate for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court?

It’s Sunday, it’s 10:30PM as I write this, and Trump has not made up his mind.  Or at least he hasn’t told anyone that he’s made up his mind.

A quick recap of the action since this morning:

The Barrett Pump Returns

Right on schedule, Barrett rose in the market from the mid-20s to the mid-30s.  On what?  Nothing but confidence.  Kethledge owned the leading spot, falling back from his overnight highs in the mid-40s to the mid-30s.  Kavanaugh languished in third in the mid-20s and Hardiman seemed destined to failure in the low teens.

But then, at mid-day, news…

Maggie et al. at NYT Report Hardiman Rising

The NYTimes report confirmed a rumor posted earlier by David Lat, and sent Hardiman’s stock to 30c briefly (it would settle in the mid-20s).  More importantly, the NYT reported that Kethledge had been “all but ruled out”.  Kethledge crashed from mid-30s to low teens, and Barrett and Kav were beneficiaries of his loss in value.  The reporting was quickly confirmed by other news outlets.

The Barrett Pump Cannot Be Stopped…

News can only affect a market for so long.  After 4 pm went and Trump told reporters that he still had not made a decision – in fact remarking that he might take til noon tomorrow to finalize his choice – the Barrett pump returned.  She hit 60c in early evening trading on a headrush of irrational exuberance and FOMO.

…Or Can It?

The final piece of news today is that Trump – while still totally undecided – was “focusing” his attention on Hardiman and Kavanaugh.  (Unless you believe Breitbart, in which case it’s Barrett and Hardiman).  Eventually, this news would send Kavanaugh surging up to the mid-40s (he’s since retreated somewhat).

When Will the Cookie Crumble?

Early reports suggested Trump was giving himself til 9pm tonight to make a final decision.  That’s passed.  Now he’s set a new time of 12 pm tomorrow (around his intelligence briefing).  We could get a leak at essentially any moment tomorrow morning.  Or not.  It could get to the point where we’re literally trading on rumors of who’s at home and who’s flying to D.C.

Good luck out there, fellow traders!

Bonus meme:

Who was the enterprising trader that decided to max bet Joan Larsen and Charles Canady at 6:30pm today?

 

Welcome to the penultimate day of the SCOTUS market my friends.  It’s Sunday, roughly 9AM as I write, and we’ve got 36 hours of who knows what’s going to happen left for us in the SCOTUS market (and its lesser-appreciated sidekick).

The Barrett Pump

There was a time Thursday and Friday when it was starting to feel like things were just gonna slowly drift to $1 for Kavanaugh.  CNBC reported Trump had settled on him, while other outlets confirmed it was down to Kavanaugh or Kethledge.  By late Friday night, he hit 63c.

Then Saturday saw one of the most concentrated infusions/pumps of dumb money on Barrett I think I’ve ever witnessed.  From a low of 18c overnight Friday she was pumped up to a high near 42c.  On what?  Drudge report ran a top-of-the-site piece re-hashing some Orrin Hatch op-ed that had run 12 hours earlier (but I guess the market had forgotten about?).

Still, Kav retained much of his value, sitting in the mid-40s most of the day.  And what a slow slow day it was news-wise.  Literally 0 relevant tweets from morning until 8:30pm…

When the News Finally Comes

…And then Maggie and JMart hit us with their Saturday piece, with the news that McTurtle is pumping Kethledge and Hardiman as the most confirmable.  More importantly, they reported that Trump was still undecided, switching between names every few hours.  Trump was bringing up Kethledge the least they said, is still worried about Kav being a Bushie, and is intrigued by the idea of nominating a woman.  And still talking Hardiman.

Hardiman was the biggest beneficiary of that article (from 6c to 13c), but the real movement didn’t come until a Time Magazine piece dropped from the lesser-known Phil Elliott.  He alleged that Kavanaugh was fading (and corroborated earlier reports from NYT that McGahn hasn’t been pumping him as hard), and further reported that Trump was referring to Kethledge as “Gorsuch 2.0”.

Now THIS was a real market-mover.  Kethledge popped from mid 20s to high 40s, Kav died to mid-20s, Barrett died to mid-20s, Hardiman fell back from headier upper teens to very low teens.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday…

That’s just two articles worth of 15c swings all over the board.  It’s Sunday.  We’re going to get Sunday shows.  We’re going to get multiple tweets.  We’re going to get leaks.  Some of it is going to conflict.  Trump, ostensibly, is making the actual decision today.  Or will he?  Will he change his mind after if he does?

Enjoy the trading fam…

Elsewhere on PI:

Trump testify takes another beating – Rudy et al. continue their confrontational approach.

Whither the tweets? Trump is quiet-ish.  WHT is uncharacteristically silent for a Saturday.  Pence silent.  The calm before the SCOTUS storm?

What’s up with Theresa May? I take it she’s facing some conservative pressure on immigration, but I haven’t looked into it further.

See my preview (written Thursday) for what to expect from the upcoming week.

Disclaimer: In the interest of not breaking any laws, I feel I should disclose that I probably have positions or intend to take positions in just about all the markets I will discuss herein.  You should always do your own research prior to making any investment decision. You should consider my advice and knowledge I share to be fundamentally biased in its presentation and selection by my own monetary incentives.  While I do not knowingly lie in this I certainly do knowingly omit information that I think gives me an edge.

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SCOTUS week!  

Will Kavanaugh get the final rose?  Will Kethledge complete his dark horse ascendancy?  Will Barrett pull a miracle comeback? Will Mike Lee’s pathetic attempts get him anywhere?  Will Trump change his mind at the last minute as he has for countless other big decisions?

After bouncing around considerably for the first week, the market has decided based on reports today that it’s either going to be Kavanaugh or Kethledge (Barrett, the right-wing money pick, has endured a crushing setback in value, going from an always-somewhat-inexplicable high near 40c to 15c before now rebounding to the mid 20s).

I have no special insight for you here – McGahn and WH staff seem to be pushing Kav pretty hard.  Trump is leery of the Bush connection and was somewhat impressed by Keth, but we haven’t had much solid reporting on what he actually thinks.  (We have gotten reporting on what “sources close to the president” say he thinks, and most of these seem to be McGahn pumping Kav).

Pay close attention to twitter – Bob Costa, Jennifer Jacobs, and John Roberts seem to be clued into this one reasonably closely.  I expect the final news to break/leak by Sunday at the latest.

One more thing to watch – will Trump mention any candidate by name at the North Dakota rally tonight?  Sometimes he likes to float names to see how the crowd reacts…

FRIDAY MID-DAY UPDATE: No rally mention, and now Dawsey is reporting that Trump hasn’t quite committed on Kavanaugh, and continues to raise Barrett’s and Hardiman’s names in private.  This one will break soon fam, enjoy the ride this weekend.

The SCOTUS markets to come…

Aside from the main event, do be sure to check out some of the ancillary markets that will surely crop up.  We will probably get new markets for key senator’s votes as well as for how many votes the nominee gets in total.  These are insanely fun and not to be missed!

The Tweet Streets

(Unsure how to play tweet markets?  Check out my two-part guide here and here.  Links will be updated when new markets are made for PT and VPT.)

RDT – Where is the energy, Mr. President?  After a blistering June pace, he seems to have run out of steam.  SCOTUS decision occupying his mind? Not enough witch hunt news? With the NATO summit / UK / Putin summit coming up I have a hunch this might be a really boring B1 market unless he dig deep and find his inner shitposter one more time for us this weekend.

FRIDAY MID-DAY UPDATE: He continues not to rant, but has maintained a reasonable enough pace with randoms and what look like scavino pre-writes that the market will be interesting.

PT, WHT – What’s on the agenda?  I expect a big SCOTUS push once the nominee is named, plus some tweets accompanying the President’s travels abroad.  WHT has a non-negligible chance of overrunning the board into B7, but I’m hopeful that won’t happen until later in the week.  WHT might be the best bet for tweet market swings, in fact. As far as PT, we’ll have to see what the bracket fairies bring us on Friday, but my guess is another lightly traded week.

One X-factor – will Bill Shine make an impact on these markets?  Will messaging strategy change? Something to keep an eye on.

FRIDAY MID-DAY UPDATE: Is the PT-WHT link breaking down?  We’ve seen some conspicuous failures to retweet WHT on PT Thursday and Friday.  Will be interesting to see how that holds up heading into SCOTUS/Euro travels week.

VPT – After a dead B1 week, can next week rebound?  Will the bracket fairies screw us on Friday? From what I can see from Pence’s events next week should have a strong uptick in energy compared to this pathetic showing.

FRIDAY MID-DAY UPDATE: What a cuckening this morning.  At least he has some energy still, but let’s see if he can maintain that for his events next week.

Polling World

(Unsure about how to play polling markets?  Check out my two-part guide here and here).

It’s a new month, we’re past the holiday, and we’ve got a big event in the SCOTUS pick to poll around.  Hopefully we get some polls (NBC/WSJ? Fox?) next week to coincide with it.

538 TA – My guess (and it really is a guess) is that we don’t move that much from where we are.  Reuters has, as usual, the biggest chance to make a difference here. So pay attention to that Friday and then as usual the game is determining how the daily YGs, Ras, and Gal will tip the scales in the end.

RCP TA – Lord who knows this far out.  For this week’s market, we’re pretty much down to Ras and drops, so beware.

538 Ballot – Generic ballot polls have been strange lately.  Some pollsters are showing Ds breaking away a bit, others are showing Rs gaining ground.  The net effect has been that the average delta between them doesn’t move that much. I’ve got my fingers crossed that we get some solid national polls early next week that come in time to possibly flip this market.  But, like every week, it’ll probably just come down to Reut, Ras, YG, and MC all canceling each other out.

Ras – Fantastic market this week!  After two days off it’ll be interesting to see what number Trump spikes tomorrow.  Has the immigration politics-of-the-moment faded? Is it time for the Ras fairy to cook up a few more 50+ dailies?  Or will their respondents keep reporting that the President is a piece of shit? This one could go anywhere.
Markets to watch:

Strzok testify is one to watch this week.  He’s been subpoenaed to testify next Tuesday July 10 publicly.  So if that happens – it goes YES! Will he show though? While he’s stated in the past that he wants to testify publicly, his lawyer has also made protestations recently that the transcript from his private deposition wasn’t publicly released and has threatened to ignore the subpoena.  Is this gamesmanship? A very interesting spot given the pricing, and one that is likely to break soon.

Fuckin’ Scott Pruitt lol.  Will he finally get canned?  Maggie is hearing things, but she sounds skeptical.  And he did show up to the WH picnic no fucks given.  I don’t think he gets fired before the SCOTUS nom, and I don’t think he gets fired in the immediate aftermath, so idk.  Knife him during August? Wheeler can hold down the fort past the midterms if senate Rs are squeamish about a confirmation fight beforehand, so I don’t think that’s a big deal.

NOTE AFTER THE FACT: welp I was wrong about the timing!  HE GONE FAM.  The latest NYTimes story did him in (only 20 minutes from publication to resignation!).

The farm bill.  Have done negligible research on this but I suppose there’s always a chance that the conference negotiations go reasonably expeditiously and produce results before the August recess.  Whether that’s in time for both Houses to vote and Trump to sign by July 31 I don’t know.

One final note, it’ll be interesting to see what the first tariffs of the US-China trade war do on Friday to global markets (and Trump’s psyche in response).

 

Welcome to an experimental bit of content.  My goal with this weekly prospectus is to give newer (and maybe experienced) traders a flavor for what to expect in the markets active this week.  In so doing, perhaps a few of you readers out there might decide to explore some markets you might have avoided in the past.

Disclaimer: In the interest of not breaking any laws, I feel I should disclose that I probably have positions or intend to take positions in just about all the markets I will discuss herein.  You should always do your own research prior to making any investment decision. You should consider my advice and knowledge I share to be fundamentally biased by my own monetary incentives.  While I do not knowingly lie in this I certainly will knowingly omit information that I think gives me an edge.

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It’s the last week of June and the last week to make sure you hit that monthly income target.  Let’s have a look at what’s in store…

The Tweet Streets

(Unsure how to play tweet markets?  Check out my two-part guide here and here.)

RDT – Well this one is all but over.  It needs runner-runner-runner silent or two-tweet mornings probably to flip.  A silent Monday morning might induce a panic to sub-90s but even then it’s gonna be tough.  Also, the dude is probably just gonna tweet.

PT, WHT – Really interesting spots for both of these markets to be honest.  The week ahead for official WH events (as I know it) seems relatively light – or at least relatively devoid of stuff that the market would normally expect to be heavy.

Still, there’s plenty of leftover material from the roundtables last week for WHT to re-heat and I do expect (as does the market) that we’ll continue to see a drip-drip-drip of immigration-related stuff.  For PT, the big question mark is if Scavino keeps hitting up RDTs at the rate he was the end of last week and if he starts picking up the VPTs with some consistency again. If the latter, I expect him to hit B90 easily.

Overall: swing potential is high in WHT, low to moderate in PT.

VPT – A great spot for this market.  Some of the market is blind to what the week will bring, some of the market knows but is skeptical, some knows and is bullish.  A classic test of expectations vs reality, ignorance vs knowledge. A shame the volume is low in there at the moment, but I expect that will change early on this week.

Polling World

(Unsure about how to play polling markets?  Check out my two part guide here and here).

The last week of June means we have five markets to preview:

538 TA – Closing Monday at midnight, this market is fairly loose at the moment (and low volume as usual).  The big question here (and for the other approval markets this week) is what Monday’s Gallup decides to do.  Everyone expects Gal to give back a few of the points it got during last week’s record. But how many? Other than Rasmussen and Gal, there are a couple daily YGs that might matter, maybe a late-breaking Morning Consult, and you never know when a random iShittizen will show up on 538.  This market will certainly move a bit – I question whether it will be a truly epic day though.

RCP TA – How much will Gal be down?  How much will Ras be up by the end of the week?  Assuming Harvard-Harris comes, will it make an impact?  Whither Marist these days? I don’t see drops playing a huge role here given that Monmouth is relatively high but you never know.

RCP TA Monthly – AKA the “can his approval hit 44% by Saturday?” market.  The path seems challenging: avoid taking too much damage from Gal, counteract that damage and then some with a rise in Ras, dodge anything catastrophic from YouGov and Ipsos, and get a slightly higher than expected Harvard Harris.  Oh and definitely let’s hope Monmouth doesn’t drop.

538 Ballot – An intriguing spot for sure given the pricing.  I don’t see too much surprising hitting this market but one can always dream.  A typical week of waiting to see what the Tuesday and Wednesday fairies bring in terms of Reuters, Morning Consult, YouGov, and Rasmussen.  My guess is everything just washes up against one another and we stay in B6.0% but the two shoulder brackets certainly have their shot as well.  In particular I wouldn’t be surprised if B5.0% crosses 50c at some point or the other.

Ras – Really good market this week!  The monday number will be critical of course, but this one has a good shot at being alive til the end.

 

Election Markets – June 26 Primary

Click here to see all the election markets active on Tuesday.

As is usually the case with me I’ve done very little research at all on any of these races.  I expect Grimm vs Donovan to be the marquis event of the evening with the Maryland D-Gov primary also bringing in some volume.  There do appear to be several live markets Tuesday though, and I expect the savvy trader will be able to find several profitable spots throughout the evening (SC-02 is kind of catching my eye).

As always, do your own research on ballotpedia etc before election night so you at least have a sense of what the basic dynamics are.  Get the NYT ready, get Vox/DDHQ ready, get the local county results ready (where applicable) and enjoy the trading.

Other markets

Well the Mexican election is coming up soon, though that market is basically done (we’ll see if we get an MoV or something).

Strzok testify is probably due for a swing or two this week (this market spiked to 60c on news that he was being subpoena’d, crashed to 25c when those traders realized he was just being called in for a private deposition, and has spiked again near 60c when Goodlatte said in an interview Sunday that they would call on Strzok to testify publicly shortly).  Let’s see what gets announced after his Wednesday deposition.

All the June 30 markets are closing, so go hoover up your pennies if that’s something you’re into.  Pruitt and RodRo have the most to collect if you’re confident they’ll last (they almost certainly last, but you never know yadda yadda).

There are no fun markets for Congress this week, though we may get one for whether or not Republicans in the House pass an immigration bill, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

Finally it looks like the Supreme Court decision on public sector unions is probably going to hit this week, so have a gamble over here if you like.